Decoding retail location: A primer for the age of big data and social media

The rise of social media and the open government movement are revolutionising data-driven research in social sciences. In this paper we use passively collected datasets of human mobility and public records of economic activity to develop a shopping location choice model that considers internal and external economies of scale at the outlet level. Our findings highlight the impact of scale and agglomeration on shopping location choices and form a platform for further research.